The biggest pitfalls of a SEO migration

In an ideal world, migrating your website from one platform to another would be a breeze. You simply update all the new site URLs and redirects in your old CMS and let the crawlers do their thing. In reality, however, it can get messy. Mistakes are often made when transferring content from one site to another. URLs are often fragmented and redirected somewhere onder way. This makes it difficult for search engines to index them correctly. As a result, your SEO performance takes a hit. Migrating your website is never fun, but with the right precautions, you can significantly reduce your risk of getting burned by this. In this article, you will read some handy tips to avoid the biggest pitfalls of a SEO migration.

Perform a crawl analysis before migration

Before starting a migration, you should get an idea of how your website is currently indexed by crawlers. This will help you better understand how the process works and allow you to be more accurate with the redirects, reducing your risk of duplicate content. There are several tools that can help you do this. If you are migrating from WordPress, you can use the Yoast SEO migration plugin. You can also use a crawler such as Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl to perform a full site audit. This will give you a complete overview of how your website is indexed. You can then use this information to map out how URLs are currently being redirected. This will help you minimise the risk of any redirects disrupting your SEO once the migration is complete.

Check for duplicate content and canonical tags

Your content migrate zonder to check for duplicate content is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Not only does it increase your risk of triggering a Panda algorithm penalty, but it also makes your life more difficult when it comes to redirecting URLs. Duplicate content can occur in several ways, but the most common are:

• Copying and pasting the same content across multiple URLs: If you have multiple pages that have the same content, you need to create a canonical tag add to let Google know which one to show as the primary URL. If you don't do this, Google may decide to show one of the pages, but it won't be clear which one. This can cause problems if the chosen page is not the one you want to display.

• Using a noindex tag on one page and a nofollow tag on another page: If one page is blocked from displaying in search results and another page is not, Google may choose to display both pages. It is important that you clearly state which page you want to display. If you don't, you run the risk of Google choosing something that won't benefit your readers.

Don't forget to update your sitemap

Sitemaps are important for a number of things, trueonder discovering new content faster by Google. If you migrate to a new website, you need to update your sitemap to reflect these changes. The easiest way to do this is to create a completely new sitemap for your new website and then enter a redirect for each of the URLs in your old sitemap. This way, you ensure that Google continues to visit your old pages while redirecting them to their new destination. You should also make sure your new sitemap contains the correct URLs for your new content. For example, if you have changed the URL structure of your blog posts, you need to update the sitemap. Make sure Google is aware of all your new pages as soon as possible so you don't miss out on the SEO benefits of migration.

Monitor your SEO performance during the migration process

During the migration process, keep a close eye on your SEO performance. Use Google Search Console to check how often crawlers are visiting your site. If you notice a sudden drop in the number of visits, it is likely that an error has onderway occurred. Keep an eye on these problems and fix them as soon as possible.

Test your website after the migration is complete

Finally, it is important to test your website after the migration is complete. This is the best way to ensure that everything is running smoothly and that the SEO performance has not suffered too much damage. Ideally, you want to have your new website operational before you migrate your old site so that you can test it for any issues or errors. Once you have completed the migration, keep an eye on your site's SEO performance over the next few weeks. If you see your rankings dropping and traffic taking a hit, consider re-crawling your old site to get your rankings back up.

Need help with the SEO migration?

Performing a SEO migration can still be quite a big and complicated job. After all, there are a lot of factors to take into account. Missing something could cause a big hit to your SEO results, something you obviously don't want! We have a very handy SEO migration checklist made for you. Should you prefer to leave it to the specialists, we are of course happy to help you with the migration of your website. Take today contact at for more information.